My System

Hardware Issues

Poor Audio Frequency Response via Headphones

The amplifier output coupling capacitors C4111 and C4110 are much too small (1uF). It should be approx. 100uF according to the datasheet of LM4853.

GSM Modem not working

I could not communicate with the modem not even with u-boot and after removing battery over night.
In this case with FSO frameworkd slowed down the system very much, OM2008.9 was almost not usable.

I removed frameword (fso-gpsd does not work without frameworkd and therefore needed to be replaced by gpsd.

Using GPRS is possible, but a bit tricky. I am currently swichting GSM off and on waiting for the modem startup message. But sometimes I get a strange "alarm".

Real Time Clock unreliable

The RTC is approx. 12 min off per day. I wonder whether the 10pF capacitors at the oscillator crystal are really needed. Maybe I can tune the RTC by lowering the values of those capacitors.
Or is there a tuning register in the RTC unit?

I read a voltage of 475 mV at the terminals of the backup battery BAT1701.

Location Reporting

Slope, Vertical Speed

The GPS does not give sufficiently accurate vertical speed.
A barometric sensor (see Variometer) would be nice. Calculation of the vertical speed by integrating the accelerometer readings also not accurate.
But maybe it is possible to use the accelerometers to measure the slope of the road.
How to calibrate it? Is it possible to automatically calibrate it from GSP reading?

Sideward Inclination of the Bicycle

By measuring the increase of the total acceleration not by change of the acceleration angle.

Road Quality

Can the road (e.i. surface) quality be recorded by measuring the vibrations with the accelerometers?

Car Counter

... using the builtin microphone. Or would it be possible with the accelerometers using high sampling rate?

Heart Rate Monitor

Are there Bluetooth Heart Rate Transmitters available?

Pedalling Frequency

Pedal sensors with Bluetooth and power supply by magnetic induction would be nice.

Otherwise USB with an FTDI chip.

Panorama Viewer

Online panorama viewer similar to gipfel.
Instead of the photo image we show the mountain panorama calculated from SRTM data. Online calculation with the SRTM data is much to slow, we use only the precalculated water divide lines.

Programming

Language

Python

UI

python-etk

I could not find any documentation yet. Seems to be the same as python-gtk.

I don't want to have eye-candies. Maybe eye-candies are neccessary for selling phones. Eye-candies cause eye-caries or even brain-caries. ;-) They are for gamers.

Colors are o.k. if they carry information. Color gradients of menu bars are useless and annoying.

Tichy

alternative window managers

The bicycle computer should show different values at the same time. This should be user configurable at runtime. What about having little python scripts just showing a window with one value and let the window mananger do the rest?

Plotting

Jogging

Accelerometer

Mount the Freerunner to the shin and measure the damping and motion style with different shoes at various speeds.
Especially interesting to watch the aging of the shoes (different damping).

Openstreetmap

I would like to have a simple application to add map information at my current location.
Say, I am standing beneath an ATM, just use a menu item "Add ATM" and typing in its name - finished. There is no need for a map display. The program just displays the OSM nodes near the current location. And you can add a new node or modify an existing node.

Hardware

I was wondering about the steps of 18 units in the histogram of the accelerometer data. Now I know: the kernel driver already scales the raw data from the chip to mg units.
The data from the chip come as 8 bit data. In +-2.3G mode we get a resolution step size of 18 mg.

Games

Finger-usable application to play the game of Go:
Somebody somewhere suggested a double click methode for keyboard input. The first click zooms the area of the keyboard the second click activates the key. I don't want this for keyboards but for Go and similar games this could be quite interesting.

Line of Sight Calculation

Smith Chart

Circuit Entry and Simulation

Radio Control

Control for Commercial TRXs

Homemade TRXs

* I2C interface on test points
* SPI interface on debug connector

Music

Midi Input via Touchscreen

There is not much space to use the touchscreen as an ordinary piano keyboard.

What about using the touchscreen like the left hand fingering on a guitar, mandolin, banjo ore similar? The touchscreen lays in front of you in landscape mode. There are four rows, one for each finger.

Personal tools

My System

Hardware Issues

Poor Audio Frequency Response via Headphones

The amplifier output coupling capacitors C4111 and C4110 are much too small (1uF). It should be approx. 100uF according to the datasheet of LM4853.

GSM Modem not working

I could not communicate with the modem not even with u-boot and after removing battery over night.
In this case with FSO frameworkd slowed down the system very much, OM2008.9 was almost not usable.

I removed frameword (fso-gpsd does not work without frameworkd and therefore needed to be replaced by gpsd.

Using GPRS is possible, but a bit tricky. I am currently swichting GSM off and on waiting for the modem startup message. But sometimes I get a strange "alarm".

Real Time Clock unreliable

The RTC is approx. 12 min off per day. I wonder whether the 10pF capacitors at the oscillator crystal are really needed. Maybe I can tune the RTC by lowering the values of those capacitors.
Or is there a tuning register in the RTC unit?

Location Reporting

Slope, Vertical Speed

The GPS does not give sufficiently accurate vertical speed.
A barometric sensor (see Variometer) would be nice. Calculation of the vertical speed by integrating the accelerometer readings also not accurate.
But maybe it is possible to use the accelerometers to measure the slope of the road.
How to calibrate it? Is it possible to automatically calibrate it from GSP reading?

Sideward Inclination of the Bicycle

By measuring the increase of the total acceleration not by change of the acceleration angle.

Road Quality

Can the road (e.i. surface) quality be recorded by measuring the vibrations with the accelerometers?

Car Counter

... using the builtin microphone. Or would it be possible with the accelerometers using high sampling rate?

Heart Rate Monitor

Are there Bluetooth Heart Rate Transmitters available?

Pedalling Frequency

Pedal sensors with Bluetooth and power supply by magnetic induction would be nice.

Otherwise USB with an FTDI chip.

Panorama Viewer

Online panorama viewer similar to gipfel.
Instead of the photo image we show the mountain panorama calculated from SRTM data. Online calculation with the SRTM data is much to slow, we use only the precalculated water divide lines.

Programming

Language

Python

UI

python-etk

I could not find any documentation yet. Seems to be the same as python-gtk.

I don't want to have eye-candies. Maybe eye-candies are neccessary for selling phones. Eye-candies cause eye-caries or even brain-caries. ;-) They are for gamers.

Colors are o.k. if they carry information. Color gradients of menu bars are useless and annoying.

Tichy

alternative window managers

The bicycle computer should show different values at the same time. This should be user configurable at runtime. What about having little python scripts just showing a window with one value and let the window mananger do the rest?

Plotting

Jogging

Accelerometer

Mount the Freerunner to the shin and measure the damping and motion style with different shoes at various speeds.
Especially interesting to watch the aging of the shoes (different damping).

Openstreetmap

I would like to have a simple application to add map information at my current location.
Say, I am standing beneath an ATM, just use a menu item "Add ATM" and typing in its name - finished. There is no need for a map display. The program just displays the OSM nodes near the current location. And you can add a new node or modify an existing node.

Hardware

I was wondering about the steps of 18 units in the histogram of the accelerometer data. Now I know: the kernel driver already scales the raw data from the chip to mg units.
The data from the chip come as 8 bit data. In +-2.3G mode we get a resolution step size of 18 mg.

Games

Finger-usable application to play the game of Go:
Somebody somewhere suggested a double click methode for keyboard input. The first click zooms the area of the keyboard the second click activates the key. I don't want this for keyboards but for Go and similar games this could be quite interesting.

Line of Sight Calculation

Smith Chart

Circuit Entry and Simulation

Radio Control

Control for Commercial TRXs

Homemade TRXs

* I2C interface on test points
* SPI interface on debug connector

Music

Midi Input via Touchscreen

There is not much space to use the touchscreen as an ordinary piano keyboard.

What about using the touchscreen like the left hand fingering on a guitar, mandolin, banjo ore similar? The touchscreen lays in front of you in landscape mode. There are four rows, one for each finger.